EPA Provides $300,000 in Grants and Loans to Clean Up Contaminated Properties in the Bronx; Funding will Help Create Over 150 Affordable Housing Units

(New York, N.Y.) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is providing a total of $300,000 in grants and low-interest loans to the City of New York to clean up abandoned and contaminated properties. The funding is being awarded under the EPA’s brownfields program, which helps communities assess, clean up, and reuse properties at which moderate contamination threatens environmental quality and public health and can interfere with redevelopment.

“Cleaning up brownfields sites allows abandoned and contaminated sites to be cleaned up and revitalized as new parks, new housing and businesses that create jobs,” said EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck. “This funding will protect the health of area residents, and will help revitalize neighborhoods."

Revolving loan funds supply funding for grant recipients to provide loans and sub-grants to carry out cleanup activities at brownfield sites. When these loans are repaid, the loan amounts are then returned into the fund and re-loaned to other borrowers. This provides an ongoing source of capital within a community as the funds are provided to other grantees.

The City of New York will receive $300,000 in grants and low-interest loans to clean up sites being used for new housing in the Bronx. The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development will use a $120,000 grant to construct a 57-unit affordable housing project on 491 E. 165th Street and 1052 Washington Avenue. This project that will result in 19 affordable units and 38 units of supportive housing. Supportive housing is a combination of affordable housing and support services designed to help individuals and families following a period of homelessness, hospitalization or incarceration, or for youth aging out of foster care. The South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation will use a $60,000 grant and a $120,000 low-interest loan to build an affordable housing project at 996 Washington Avenue that will result in 95 units to serve formerly homeless individuals.

There are an estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated sites in the United States. The EPA’s Brownfields Program targets these sites to encourage redevelopment, and help to provide the opportunity for productive community use of contaminated properties. The EPA’s brownfields investments overall have leveraged more than $20 billion in cleanup and redevelopment funding from public and private sources and on average, $17.79 is leveraged for every EPA Brownfields grant dollar spent. The funds have enabled the support of 90,000 jobs in cleanup, construction and redevelopment.